Perry Rhodan - cycle summaries

Introduction and support documents

Perry Rhodan is a German space opera series. It started in 1961 and the original story has had one book printed per week since then, so it is well past issue #3300!

It starts with Americans finding stranded aliens on the first human trip to the moon. The human commander, Perry Rhodan, uses their technology to unify the world's governments, then heads out to the stars, where there are many alien races and empires. Humans fight enemies, make allies, and are usually successful in overcoming their crises, but occasionally suffer huge setbacks.

The storylines start small and simple, but over time have grown into complex, intertwined storylines with multiple groups of characters going on multiple missions to solve whatever the current crisis is.

The technology also starts simple, but over time more and more powerful machines are created by various races, including time travel and intergalactic teleportation. Eventually, the largest spaceships build by humans are 5-8 miles in size. At one point, an entire galaxy is transferred from one universe to another!

There are mutants with psionic abilities, aliens of all shapes and sizes with various innate abilities, creatures with the powers of gods, able to grant immortality, alter reality with a thought, and travel back in time to change history. There are even creatures more powerful then them, able to alter the conditions of the entire universe with a thought!

The following documents provide an introduction to the cycle summaries (a "cycle" usually consists of 100 books, but occasionally only 25 or 50 books) and background information for reference :

An introduction to the series, the summaries, and my process of making them.

A list of all the cycles, grouped into super-cycles, including book numbers, the in-story dates of the action, and a one- or two-sentence "big picture" summary of the cycle.

A list of the most important races and individuals across all the stories, with a very brief description of each.

A timeline of the rise and fall of various human and alien governments.

A brief description of the most important technological devices developed by humans over time.

An in-depth description of the "higher powers" in the unverse, as well as a detailed description of the "physics" of how the universe works.


The cycle summaries :

Cycles 1-4

Cycles 5-6

Cycles 7-10

Cycles 11-15

Cycles 16-20

Cycles 21-22

Cycles 23-26

Cycles 27-32

Cycles 33-35

Cycles 36-37

Cycles 38-41

Cycles 42-44